Microsoft will pay Novell USD 348 million up front, but Novell will return USD 200 million of that amount over five years. The specific numbers came in an a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission made by Novell late Tuesday. "The financial commitments Microsoft is making as part of this agreement are significant," company CEO Ron Hovsepian said in a statement. In related news, Microsoft has denied that its patent deal with Novell is in breach of the GPL or will automatically spread Microsoft's patent protection to other Linux distributions.

That's how the GPL-haters are painting it, yes. In reality, there are clear paths to complying with the spirit of the GPL which MS are not taking. So of course they are getting heat from "the open source community" who, of course, use Linux because it is a viable open source solution.

There are those who have always spread the FUD that "you can't make money off open source Linux", despite the fact that Redhat et al. have been doing that for years - BUT Novell seemingly haven't been able to.

Now, tell me, is that because of a problem with open source or because of a problem with Novell?

So now they go to MS and together they say "yes - you can make money from open source! By making it proprietary!" It's AT&T Sys III all over again.

As for openSUSE, if they make a clear statement that they will do what they can to prevent any code involved in the deal getting into openSUSE (and thus possibly infecting other Linux distros), then I will be the first to switch back. But I will NOT use them if I see them as a backdoor to get MS-patented code into Linux and thereby stop the whole show.

I agree with you on the perspective of Opensuse and ensuring that code involved in the deal does not make it into the project. I feel that will likely be a given seeing how this is really an enterprise deal. I however think we must not lose site of the goal and not always react with our emotions. The Novell deal does not change Linux and there really needs to be some differentiation between the distros more that package version.

I Think as a consultant and contributor the deal is a healthy on one that now allows some CIO security (No I am not implying patent infringement but commitment) Like it or not CIO's base their budgets on interoperability and that unfortunately means MS will be involved whether it is the organization or the customers.

I think it is time we accept that everyone will not be a Redhat just as HP is not a Dell. Dell has one model, HP has another, before recently Dell was all intel , HP were both AMD and intel. The model does not affect the end goal bring a great product to the end user. Novell and Redhat same goal bringing a great Linux product to the end user.

I Think as a consultant and contributor the deal is a healthy on one that now allows some CIO security (No I am not implying patent infringement but commitment) Like it or not CIO's base their budgets on interoperability and that unfortunately means MS will be involved whether it is the organization or the customers.

Linux has always been well happy to interoperate with MS (and anyone else) which is why Linux or its apps can read FAT, .doc files, use DOS partitions, read Amiga filesystems, and so on. The three barriers to interoperability with Microsoft, as Andrew Tridgell demonstrated in court, have always been: 1. Microsoft. 2. Microsoft. 3. Microsoft. Now they are saying that yes, you can interoperate, but only if you're Novell.

I think it is time we accept that everyone will not be a Redhat just as HP is not a Dell. Dell has one model, HP has another, before recently Dell was all intel , HP were both AMD and intel. The model does not affect the end goal bring a great product to the end user. Novell and Redhat same goal bringing a great Linux product to the end user.

The question is not whether Novell or Microsoft is or will be or should be a Redhat or a Debian. It is whether MS is still MS and as such will attempt to bring about the defeat of anyone who can challenge MS. What we have so far on this forum is MS's apologists saying "MS is changing and is no longer the predatory company it once was", MS's detractors saying "Well it might change. But so far it's the same. And here's the evidence," and MS's apologists saying. "No it isn't. No it isn't! NO IT ISN'T!!!".

As for your "That remains to be seen" comment Novell does not own Linux so again it does not change Linux. Also Linux is a kernel not the applications that run on top of it. No one is saying MS has change what they are saying is that collaboration is the key to the success of Linux.

Again I support the community I am a opensource advocate but I recognize the need for colaboration and also see the benefit in it. Everyone is so critical of Novell well yeah they opened this but they did not open edirectory. Again they are well within there right and they are a bridge company in itself having both opensource and proprietary applications.

Being a Redhat leaves your model vulnerable to Oracle Linux tactics and influences your revenues if say MS said well we now offer support for red Hat Linux. You need a effective collaboration plan and distinctive edirectory offering to set yourself apart) The big picture is Novell is still Novell they are still providing SUSE still contributing to the community.

SLES10 was such an advance for integration and now people want to throw it out because of their business model sound like the same people who criticize Red Hat when they change their model those same people are now praising red hat for their commitment Again community flip flop makes ordinary advocates such as myself question the value of community when they attempt to abandon great distros based on business model when they are not in violation of the GPL